It was Mother’s Day, and as she has so many times in the past, Maria Dominguez had brought her family to the Sonoma Coast, where her problems always seem smaller when cast against the vastness of the ocean.

Dominguez, a divorced mother facing eviction from her Santa Rosa home because her landlord wants to sell, gathered her three teenage kids and made the 45-minute drive to North Salmon Creek beach, where her family has free access to a wide swath of sand edging the Pacific just north of Bodega Bay.

The popular beach is part of Sonoma Coast State Park, which has encompassed 17 miles of this lightly developed coastline for more than 80 years. It was here, 21 years ago, that Dominguez, then just a 17-year-old girl recently arrived from Mexico, first saw the ocean.

“Don’t look,” a boy who’d ridden out to the coast with her said as they approached the cliff overlooking the beach. Moments later, she opened her eyes.

“Ay, Dios mío,” she said.

Oh, my God.

Generations of county residents and visitors have been similarly awestruck and enthralled during visits to the Sonoma Coast and 10 other state parks, nature reserves and historic sites within the county.

Now, to sustain California’s parks into the 21st century, state officials say the system needs an overhaul. The transformation, as outlined by a panel appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown, is meant to move past a management scandal that engulfed the parks system in 2012 and to extend the promise of places that serve as playground, refuge, classroom and museum for up to 75 million visitors a year.

That future hinges in part on a plan to improve fee collection statewide. But the Sonoma Coast is the only place in California where the state is seeking new fees, advancing an unpopular plan to impose day-use charges of up to $8 at eight coastal sites that have always been free.

The infusion of money would help parks offer more services, protect more land and open new sites for future generations to enjoy, explained John Laird, California’s secretary for natural resources, overseeing state parks.

Laird was an assemblyman during the recession, when a budget gap decades in the making for the parks department became a crisis. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration floated a plan to close dozens of parks. To stave off that scenario, Laird backed a proposal in the Legislature that would have pumped millions into the parks system through an increase in vehicle license fees. It failed to gain support, and in 2010 California voters rejected a similar measure at the ballot box.

Laird took the defeats personally. Born in Santa Rosa, he has fond memories of time spent at his grandparents’ ranch on Gravenstein Highway and trips to the Sonoma Coast with his dad, where the pair tossed tennis balls into the ocean and let the waves carry them back.

“That’s a precious resource that we have to turn over to future generations, and really, is the reason I wanted a long-term fix,” Laird said. “The voters didn’t agree, and we’re stuck in this position. We’re trying to figure out, within the context of the budget, how to do things more efficiently and how to get more money from the Legislature when we can.”

The latest, most significant bids to secure more money for parks include proposed taxes on marijuana — medical and recreational — and a bond measure that could go to voters in November. Each would generate tens of millions of dollars annually.

Fee opponents say the proposal threatens a history of unconstrained public access to the state’s coast, a guaranteed right under the state’s constitution and 1976 Coastal Act. That was the legacy of a pioneering movement launched in Sonoma County by environmental activists more than 50 years ago.

Richard Charter is a Bodega Bay resident who over four decades has fought to protect the North Coast from offshore drilling and preserve public access. Charter questions why visitors would pay extra at sites that offer few amenities beyond a parking lot and portable restrooms.

“People are used to paying for campsites or museums,” said Charter, a senior fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based Ocean Foundation. “It’s when the state, because of a certain amount of malfeasance in Sacramento, sees a gravel parking lot with an overflowing Porta-Potty as something they can start charging for, I think that raises the main questions now.”

The free park sites make Sonoma County an outlier compared with other parts of the state, where entrance fees are routinely charged, Laird said.

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“If the people of Sonoma County went and stood next to all the people from Los Angeles who are paying entrance fees and said, ‘We don’t like it, why should we do it?’ I think they would get an earful,” Laird said. “It’s about balancing interests.”

But Charter said the fee expansion represents a pivotal moment for California. He is among those who view the debate through the prism of social justice.

“Are we going to sit idly by and let the state begin to deny public access, which is really what happens when you throw financial hurdles in the way of families for whom it could serve as a roadblock to have to pay?” he said. “They simply will not go to the coast, and that changes the whole social dynamic, not just of Sonoma County, but in several counties, because Sonoma is where they come, particularly during hot-weather days.”

Rosa Rios, Dominguez’s 17-year-daughter, joined Charter and other environmental elders in April at a marathon Santa Rosa meeting of the California Coastal Commission, the influential entity that oversees protection and development of the coast. If the state were to expand day-use fees at beaches, Rios said, it would further limit the family’s options for spending time together — a point echoed throughout the day by park advocates and local elected officials.

“This is one of our favorite options to liberate us from our struggles and problems,” Rios said.

Forced to cut back

Four years removed from a scandal that toppled its director amid revelations that $54 million had been hidden by department officials to protect their budget — while dozens of parks were slated to be closed — California’s parks system faces a combination of pressures unrivaled in its 152-year history.

Chronic underfunding, management miscues and a failure to modernize have translated into scaled-back services, shorter public hours, skimpy staffing and visible signs of decay throughout the state’s 1.6 million acre parks system — the nation’s second largest behind Alaska.

In Sonoma County, cutbacks have closed bathrooms, campgrounds and water fountains in parks. In the nine-county Bay Area, park staffing is down 60 percent since before the recession, with 55 full-time state parks employees covering 28 sites, including eight in central and southern Sonoma County. The ranger corps in that territory has been cut in half since about 2008. More than $80 million in deferred repairs are needed in state parks in Sonoma County, part of a more than $1 billion backlog statewide.

Parks officials say they are seeking to overcome those hurdles, pointing to a coordinated effort in the aftermath of the 2012 scandal to overhaul management and bring park operations into the 21st century. That campaign includes upgrades in technology for visitors and rangers, greater diversity in leaders at the top of the agency and the concerted push to expand and improve fee collection.

“You’d be hard-pressed to find in our history of state parks an effort that’s been as robust as this,” said Lisa Mangat, who last year became the third director of the California Department of Parks and Recreation since 2012.

Of the 279 sites in the state park system, 171 charge fees. In Sonoma County, including state and county systems, most parks charge fees for day-use and overnight visitors. It is not fair that visitors at parks where fees are charged are subsidizing those who don’t have to, or simply don’t, pay to play, Mangat and other state park officials say.

The parks system collects more than $103 million in visitor fees annually, comprising about 20 percent of its budget.

“This is not a one-off conversation we are having with Sonoma County, but how it fits into the broader scope of the state,” Mangat said.

“We are responsible for 280 parks across the state,” she said. “There is this unprecedented initiative that’s going forward in terms of remodeling ourselves and standing up this kind of new model of stewardship, protection, preservation and interpretation for all people. That’s the overarching vision for California State Parks.”

But others, including local and state representatives, say fundamental change is still a distant dream for the state parks system. Many observers say the overhaul will achieve little if California doesn’t up its commitment to funding parks.

“The bottom line is that we have a state parks system in crisis,” said state Sen. Mike McGuire, a prominent voice among those pushing for more money for parks. He opposes the state’s beach fee plan, which he called a “piecemeal approach” that would deter access for low-income visitors and not fully address parks’ budget woes.

More than 100 ponies roam free on the slopes of Virginia’s highest peak

More than 100 wild ponies roam wild within Mount Rogers National Recreation Area and neighboring Grayson Highlands State Park in southwestern Virginia, but one in particular stands out. With his flowing mane of platinum-blond hair, which swoops nonchalantly over his eyes, the stallion calls to mind a certain popular model and actor from the 1990s whose sweeping mane graced hundreds of romance novels. Noticing a glaring similarity, park rangers dubbed the mammal Fabio and the name stuck.

“Fabio had been the leader of one of the herds for years,” Sara Abbott, the park’s recreation program manager, tells Smithsonian.com. “But then we noticed that the mares were no longer giving birth to young in that herd, so we concluded that Fabio isn’t able to do what he needs to do anymore.”

https://www.stateparks.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/eyp-vsp-partners-logo.png137224NASPDhttp://www.stateparks.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Americas_State_Parks_Logo-300x188.jpgNASPD2016-07-23 17:19:442016-07-23 17:19:44VA - The Only Place on the Appalachian Trail Where You Can See Wild Ponies

South Carolina’s 47 state parks will unite on a common project Saturday, one designed to help people in need.

As part of the park service’s Hunger Takes No Vacation food drive, state parks throughout South Carolina will ask visitors to Pack A Park Truck with food.

Donations of canned goods and other nonperishable items will be collected Saturday, kicking off a five-month collaboration with the South Carolina Food Bank Association.

The goal for Saturday is to fill park truck with unopened, nonperishable food items and to raise awareness about the year-round struggle with hunger. The parks will donate all contributions to local food banks.

“We’re inviting our local communities, as well as people who are camping with us, staying with us in cabins, simply visiting for the day, or vacationing nearby to help us fill these park trucks with donations that can help feed the needy and hungry,” said Duane Parrish, South Carolina parks, recreation and tourism director.

Despite its scenic location, Fort Atkinson State Historical Park has struggled to attract visitors and maintain upkeep. But the surrounding community and the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission are ready to invest more resources into it.

KENT SIEVERS/THE WORLD-HERALD

User fees fund the majority of the costs to run Nebraska’s eight state parks, nine historical state parks and 60 state recreation areas.

Those fees fund an even larger share of the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission’s statewide efforts to support hunting and fishing.

State general fund tax dollars represent just 12 percent of Game and Parks’ total $97 million budget, a share that has declined over time.

Given rising costs and higher public expectations for park amenities and upkeep, charging more in fees makes sense — within reason.

The commission’s push to raise next year’s annual park fees by $5 and its consideration of hunting and fishing license fee increases shouldn’t surprise. The state last raised park entry prices in 2012. It hasn’t raised hunting and fishing fees since 2008.

The state in 2014 helped Game and Parks catch up on deferred maintenance on buildings, bathrooms and disability access with a $17.5 million, one-time infusion. That work is progressing.

This spring, the Legislature approved higher ceilings for Game and Parks hunting, fishing and parks fees after the commission relayed nearly $5 million in needs.

The biggest driver for parks is day-to-day operations, including upkeep on 8,000 picnic tables, 6,000 grills and 350 miles of gravel roads.

Commission staff says Game and Parks is trying to help the state’s parks, hunting and fishing programs stay competitive with neighboring states.

A few weeks before his death in 2015, a blind Henry Trione confided to his wife as she read the newspaper aloud to him that if his name were to grace anything he ever built, he would prefer it to be Annadel State Park in Santa Rosa.

The businessman’s dying wish was granted Friday by people whom he never met: Six members of the California State Park and Recreation Commission who voted unanimously to change the park’s name to Trione-Annadel State Park.

“It meant so much to Henry,” Eileen Trione said after the vote, her eyes welling with tears.

The rare move to rename a California state park speaks to Trione’s influence, well beyond his efforts establishing Annadel as a state park in 1971. The action also means Trione will be remembered by generations of visitors to the 5,000-acre park where new signs will reflect the change.

“If Henry Trione had not lived, Annadel would be a subdivision,” state Sen. Mike McGuire told commissioners Friday.

The decision capped a two-hour public hearing at the Flamingo Conference Resort and Spa that felt remarkably like a memorial service for Trione, with speaker after speaker sharing stories of his humor and largess, as well as his humble nature.

Trione secured an option on the property that became Annadel State Park by putting up more than $1 million of his own money as part of the deal. But he shied away from public recognition for that act of land preservation.

Only in the days prior to his death at the age of 94 did Trione share that he wouldn’t mind having his name grace Annadel. At the time, he was fielding an offer from a Santa Rosa institution offering to name a building after him, according to his wife.

Whether it’s surfing along Alabama’s gulf coast, fishing and swimming at Lake Jackson in Opp to zip-lining across Lake Guntersville state park or taking a dip in the crystal Clear Blue Springs in Barbour County, Alabama’s State Parks have something to offer everyone!

Four to five million people visit Alabama’s parks each year. State Parks Director Greg Lein says that’s where state parks get the bulk its funding.

“We often talk about how our parks go from the mountains to the coast – we cover all geographical sites.” Lein said. “Some of the neighboring states that’s how they are operated, through tax dollars, but that’s not how it has been done in Alabama.”

An amendment on the ballot in November would protect the state parks funding. Funding issues threatened to shut down several state parks. All but two remain open.

“What it will do is protect the funds in which the state parks collect. It won’t allow the general fund to take that funding form out state parks system.” Phillip Darden is president of the state parks coalition says. His group works to protect the state parks.

Darden says one of the biggest challenges is making people aware of what all the state parks have to offer.

“The constant challenge that we have is getting people engaged in the outdoors.”

“We know through TripAdvisor the park system is very well regarded by the people who go there.” Lein says. “We just need to broaden that net and share that experience with people who haven’t been there.”

The Watertown Riverfront Park and Braille Trail is part of an initiative to increase recreational opportunities for people of all abilities.

WATERTOWN, MA – The Watertown Riverfront Park and Braille Trail held its grand opening Thursday, as part of the governor’s initiative to increase access to the state park system.

The park was designed by Sasaki Associates and Chester Engineers, who were supervised by the Department of Conservation and Recreation with the assistance of Perkins School for the Blind, and connects the community to the waterfront.
The Braille Trail is a quarter-mile loop within the park that wraps around a sensory garden, incorporating elements that emphasize touch, hearing and smell. The garden includes benches, stone walls, a canoe-like Mishoon boat and a musical marimba bench designed to look like a xylophone, where visitors can play music through the wooden slats.

The Braille Trail also has a guide wire to assist visitors with impaired vision. Different types of beads are placed along the wire to indicate the location of both Braille panels and seating; there are ten interpretive features along the trail written on granite posts in both English and Braille.

“Increasing access to the Commonwealth’s natural, cultural and recreational resources for people of all abilities to enjoy remains a high priority of our administration,” Gov. Charlie Baker said in a press release prior to the park’s opening. “I am excited for the opening of the Watertown Riverfront Park and Braille Trail, where visitors can appreciate the seamless blending of the park’s features with the natural surroundings for years to come.”

After some delay, the ribbon-cutting ceremony makes it official: the Humphrey Nature Center is open for business.
A large crowd of people made its way to Letchworth State Park’s newest — and maybe its greatest — asset to hear state officials honor the new digs.
Governor Andrew Cuomo spoke first and talked about what this nature center means to Letchworth and future generations.
“It’s an honor to be at Letchworth today because you are taking the premier park in the country and you are making it even better,” he said. “Peter Humphrey and his family in many ways are the perfect metaphor for that legacy and that responsibility. His grandfather, his father, and now Peter Humphrey have stepped up to make a difference and preserve this asset. His grandfather gave it to his father, his father gave it to Peter, and Peter will now give it to his grandchildren. All of us follow that model in preserving this beautiful, beautiful part of America for the next generation.”
More than $6 million in public and private money made the state-of-the-art facility come to be in what a national poll determined to the country’s No. 1 state park.
Though the center was first announced in the spring of 2014, conversations about a year-round nature center began in the 1970s when the Audobon Society suggested it.
Planning began in 2009, but ground wasn’t broken until the summer of 2015.
The new center, named after the Humphrey Family, who has had an integral part in not only the nature center, but Letchworth Park itself, was slated to receive a grand opening ceremony in June, but it was postponed in the wake of a pair of tragedies that took place at the park.
Two young boys drowned after being swept over the park’s Lower Falls the night of June 11. The night before, Ryan Almeter, a Keshequa Central School teacher who also worked for Balloons Over Letchworth, fell to his death in an accident after assisting with the landing of a hot air balloon in Nunda.
Peter Humphrey helms the Genesee State Park Commission, a position his father Wolcott Humphrey Jr. also held and a committee his grandfather Wolcott Humphrey Sr. co-founded. The GSPC was a driving force behind the nature center project.
After receiving a standing ovation, Humphrey thanked everyone for their efforts the past few years and for taking the “leap of faith” with him as they were “blazing new territory” with the nature center, which is becoming the new model for parks across the state so much so that New York State Parks Commissioner Rose Harvey mentioned plans for 12 more nature centers across New York.
She said all 12 will be modeled after this partnership and design.
What’s more, she also said the plan is to double programming at this nature center, meaning classes twice a day, seven days a week.
“Our parks are our souls and our future,” she said.
Senator Patrick Gallivan (R-C-I, Elma), was also in attendance and spoke on the importance of not only Letchworth, but all New York State parks.
He said one of his first duties as a senator involved the state park system, which was in jeopardy of folding. He said the he had to vote on Harvey as commissioner and added it was “one of my first votes and one of my best votes.”
Humphrey closed out the speeches before the official ribbon-cutting.
“Letchworth Park is like no other park,” he said. “We’ve taken a world-class park and, we hope, have made it a little bit better and hope to have thousands and thousands of people walk through those doors.”

While America’s 59 national parks may get all the glory and the Ken Burns documentaries, nearly three times as many people visit the country’s 10,234 state park areas each year. Spanning a total of more than 18 million acres across the US, America’s state parks take up the equivalent land area of 13.6 million football fields — or roughly the size of South Carolina.

So yeah, there’s kind of a lot to explore. To help us narrow down a list of the cream of the crop, we consulted locals throughout the country to give us their top picks of their favorite state parks. Behold, our glorious unveiling of America’s top 25.

https://www.stateparks.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/rsz_1logo-11.png113175NASPDhttp://www.stateparks.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Americas_State_Parks_Logo-300x188.jpgNASPD2016-07-20 23:41:082016-07-20 23:42:51Thrillist's THE 25 BEST STATE PARKS IN AMERICA YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST VISIT

Indiana Governor and Capital Campout host Mike Pence is now the Republican Vice Presidential Candidate! In June 2016, Governor Pence hosted his second Capital Campout for Indiana youth in Indianapolis at Fort Harrison State Park. He took the campers on a “Hike with Mike” to celebrate Indiana’s trail system. To see photos and how other Governors celebrated Great Outdoors Month 2016, visit: http://www.greatoutdoorsmonth.org/#!capital-campouts/cb41

Many of the early parks and preservation projects accomplished in the United States were through legislative acts by
the states. There was recognition of this growing responsibility in a relatively new field of public service. It
was through early successes that such American landmarks as Niagara Falls, the California redwoods, and the San
Jacinto battleground were saved for prosperity. A few years later, guided by Stephen Mather, the first National
Conference on [State] Parks to promote state and other public parks was conceived, organized, convened and actively
supported by practically every park and conservation luminary in the country. Held in Des Moines, Iowa in January
1921, it brought together some 200 highly motivated delegates and ignited a “prairie fire” for the development of
public parks across America. From the success of this auspicious convocation of modest beginnings grew a national
state park movement that has achieved unimaginable success.11Adapted from The State Park Movement in America by Ney Landrum

America’s State Parks today include more than 2,200 traditional state parks and more than 8,100 additional
areas that provide wonderful outdoor recreation experiences and unique historical, scientific and environmental
education opportunities. Eighteen and one-half million acres provide for grand diversity – from the vastness of a
half-million acre mountainous landscape, to the colorful intricacies of a living coral reef, to the world’s longest
stalactite formation, to the tallest sand on the Atlantic seaboard, to the historic locations where European
settlers first came to America, and much more. This mosaic of the natural resources and cultural fabric of America
and the splendor of its beauty are enjoyed by 791 million visitors to state parks annually. Both remote and resort
in their offerings, America’s State Parks are indeed yours to explore and experience.

Now, as during the past century and the beginning of the state park movement, the support of partners are invaluable
to success of parks. America’s State Parks have long been recognized their accessibility, and for
their effectiveness and management efficiencies.

Support from individuals, friends groups and corporate America are central to continuing to provide and advance quality
outdoor recreation experiences and opportunities in America’s State Parks and safeguard their importance to the
nation’s environment, heritage, health and economy.